My Quilting Journey… Come Walk With Me

Sisters come with strings attached started out as a spur of the moment activity one evening at a gathering of the Stitching Sisters in Fayetteville TN. Our sister Darlene was a real “matchy matchy” quilter when the evening started. We decided to dart up to her studio, cut out an 11″ piece of muslin and start pulling strings from a bag. We sat her down at her machine and pulled one black string and then whatever else came from the bag. We had her stitch them to the muslin. That wasn’t so bad, since black goes with everything.

We each pulled from the bag and had her sew string by string to the growing scrappy block. Oh the faces she made since nothing seemed to match in her mind. It was hilarious to watch her suffer. 🙂 When we finished the one block I challenged the group to make seven blocks each month, (that’s how large our group was) bring them to stitch group and then we’d swap with each other. We’d do this until we felt we had enough blocks for a good-sized quilt. The first month we brought in our blocks we laid them all out on the floor together so everyone could see what we were working towards. When we could all see how much fun it would be and what a pretty scrappy quilt we’d have we were off and running and excited to see what everyone brought in the following month.

If I remember correctly, we swapped for 7 months. I made several extra blocks for my own project so it would be a nice size. Three of us actually finished our quilt. Here is a view of a bit more of my finished quilt. My quilt turned our long and narrow since I got tired of making the blocks and decided to call it finished.

Sisters Come With Strings Attached

This is a great way to use up those strings you have left over from earlier projects. It adds so much color to a room and will make a great charity quilt if you choose to donate it to a worthy cause. Don’t forget to label your finished quilts. I usually put on pretty generic labels; however, for this one I wanted to include the story behind the quilt.

I know I’m very new to blogging and had to step back and decide how often I was able to blog. Since I work full-time, commute back and forth to work, quilt for others and want to have time to quilt for myself I had to make a decision. I have loads of ideas and years of experience I can share but I only have so much time in a day. I plan to blog weekly until I can retire (hopefullywithin two years) or by some miracle I can squeeze in an extra blog during the week. I love many of the daily blogs I subscribe to but I had to be realistic with myself and my schedule. Weekly is what I can handle for now. So until next week……. step out of your matchy matchy box and make an easy scrappy quilt. It will open up a whole new world for you.